Olympic Cavalcade

II2 OLYMPIC CAVALCADE was a whirr of wings as a great flight of pigeons swept and circled over the arena and sped off to every quarter of the globe, and the Games were on. · The first event was Throwing the Javelin in the now firmly established 'held-in-the-middle' style. Yes. The first event and the first shock for America, as three Finnish flags were broken at the centre mast-head, and to right and left of it, for never before had they seen three foreign flags of the same nation mast-headed together. In point of fact Jonni Myrra (215 ft. 9! in.), U. Peltonen, P. Johanson, J. Saaristo, all Finns, and A. Klumberg (Estonia) had exceeded 204ft. 8 in., and therefore the world and Olympic records made by A. A. Saaristo, also a Finn, at Stockholm in 1912, when he threw 200ft. I' 57 in. with his best hand, but Myrra's own world record of 216ft. ro! in., made in Sweden on 25 August, 1919, was not broken. The grace and skill of the Finlanders was universally admired, no less than their impressive physique. U.S.A. throwers were 7th and 9th, but America learned the lesson that no Olympic event could in the future be ignored. Myrra, who had been wounded by a carelessly cast javelin in the morning, threw with his left arm heavily bandaged. On the same afternoon W. A. Hill, G.B., who it was said had done his final training from the quarters of a -butcher fancier of sprinters in the North of England, and Abrahams startled even the American dash men by the pace they showed in the preliminary heats of the roo metres, but the wiseacres shook their heads. Hill, they said, might have left his running form on an English track when he had turned in a shattering time; had it been run in competition it would have been a record, while Abrahams was altogether too young and inexperienced. There were other causes for British satisfaction, for Baker and Carroll came safely and skilfully through the High Jump preliminaries, while Rudd, of Oxford University, running in the green and gold of South Africa, who~ Jack Moakley held to be one of the greatest middle-distance runners he had ever seen, the 19,-years-old Cambridge Blue, Edgar Mountain, and the veteran Albert Hill, all three came safely through the early stages of the 8oo metres. On the second day of compefition, which was Monday, r6 August, America made a clean sweep of the 400 metres Hurdles Final, F. F. Loomis winning in the world record time of 54 secs. ·from J. K. Norton and A. G. Desch, his fellow Americans, and Andre, the French youth who had tied for 2nd place in the Olympic High Jump:,1n 1908. Once again Rudd of South ~frica and the British representati_ves, Mountain and Hill, survived the sem1-final stage of the 8oo metres. The 100 metres Final was on the same afternoon. Ali Khan, France, who had defeated W. A. Hill in the semi-final, went through to the Final; so did Edward, now our sole remaining British hope; the rest were all Americans. Charley Paddock, U.S.A., then at the very zenith of his fame and holder of the pseudonym 'The fastest runner on earth', had qualified along .with Morris Kirksey, Loren Murchison and Jackson Scholz-the latter afterwards became famous as a short story